16 May 2011 | News | Human rights | Social activists at risk
60 years later
Israel repressed exiled Palestinians while they demanded to return to their lands
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The image of hundreds of Palestinians marching in neighboring countries to the borders established by the State of Israel went round the world yesterday. They were holding Palestinian flags and emblems. On the other side, Israeli soldiers, body on the ground behind the fences, were shooting at the crowd.
According to latest news, 16 Palestinians were killed yesterday by the Israeli forces while another 200 were injured by bullets. The Palestinians were trying to cross the Israeli borders as part of the commemoration of the Nakba (or catastrophe), the day to mark the exile of thousands of Palestinians as result of the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.
Lebanon, Syria and Jordan host hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees who arrived to those countries after being forced to leave their lands that year. The demonstrations carried out by Palestinians in the exile aimed to demand the return of the refugees to their homes, and were called through social networks, imitating the way the pro-democracy demonstrations were organized in the Middle East.
The leaders of the main Palestinian political parties described the repression as “bloody” while similar adjectives were used by political leaders of Arab neighboring countries.
“I ask that God save the souls of the martyrs who fell today at the hands of the soldiers of the Israeli occupation while they were in a demonstration commemorating the Nakba inside the nation, in the West Bank, Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and on the Syrian and Lebanese border. Their precious blood will not be shed in vain, because it is blood that was shed for the liberation and rights of our Palestinian people.” said Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, Democracy Now! reported.
Meanwhile, Israeli military sources accused the Syrian and Iranian governments of having promoted the protests to divert the attention from what is happening with the civil society in their countries. They also blamed Lebanon for being “passive” by allowing the demonstrators to go near the border, although at the same time they declared that Lebanese forces had used real ammunitions to stop them.
The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said he was determined to “defend the Israeli borders” and said he was confident that the use of force “would enable a fast return to peace”.
